digimills

This list is helpful. I bought a ticket to Guatemala this morning for $69 each way and I’m still trying to figure out how $69 x2 = $223!

CHECKING BAGS

• Second bag - $10 (AirTran); $25 (American Airlines, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways)

• Southwest charges starting with third bag - $25

SEAT ASSIGNMENTS

• Exit row extra legroom - $20 (AirTran); $5 to $35 (Northwest Airlines)

• Window, aisle seats in front of plane - $5 to $30 (US Airways)

• Reserving seat number in advance online - $6 (AirTran)

• Business Select early boarding - $10 to $30 more than highest fare (Southwest)

link (via consumerist)

If you don’t know what coworking is, I didn’t until a talk at last month’s BarCamp Miami, it’s basically a shared office space. Or in the words of the international wiki, “Coworking is cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.”

Membership at the Miami location runs from $15 a day to $260-410 per month. Not bad for an office with a high speed internet, conference room, pool and 24/7 access. Their facebook group has photos and a video.

In addition to Apple, Warner Brothers is now going to throw its weight behind the Blu-ray format for high-definition disks. Warner has been the only major studio to publish its movies in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Today, the studio announced that from now on, it would only issue movies in Blu-ray.

Until now, the war between the formats has seemed like a standoff. Of the big studios, Disney, Fox and Sony have backed Blu-ray. NBC Universal and Viacom back HD DVD.

Richard Greenfield, the media analyst with Pali Research, wrote that this marks the end of the format wars: “We expect HD DVD to ‘die’ a quick death.”

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A hefty price drop apparently. 90,000 HD DVD players were sold this past weekend. I do specifically remember a commercial last week showing a wife making her man happy at the low price of a $99 Toshiba player.

As gizmodo asks, who was responsible?

Good Blu-ray news for today, my 5 free movies just arrived. Tonight shall consist of high def Chicken Little!

It’s ridiculous that any coffee shop, restaurant, airport or other business charges fees for use of wireless. The low cost of offering it free versus the return on increased patronage should be a no-brainer.

When Starbucks introduced for-pay Wi-Fi in 2002, it seemed like a great deal (especially for business customers who could expense it). But five years later, the model appears old and stale and ready for a complete overhaul.

Prediction: Starbucks will start rolling out free Wi-Fi access within one year.

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I’m writing from one of the few bright spots, FLL. Fort Lauderdale has free wireless throughout the airport and it’s lightning fast. Last weekend I searched MSY (New Orleans), including asking workers and moving around to different gates, and found nothing. Many others offer it at $9.95. Lame if you only have an hour or so. Another crappy solution is internet kiosks. They will soon look as dated as pay by the quarter tv seats, which MSY still has plenty of.

Off to Virginia. Looking forward to trying out Sally Bell’s Kitchen on Sunday.

layover update: free wireless in CLT!

Seriously.

“Accrue World of Warcraft gametime at the rate of 1% of every dollar in qualifying purchases. The World of Warcraft Rewards Visa is the only card that pays you to play.”

Remember to pay off those gold purchases each month!

link (thanks alex)

Microsoft to acquire Yahoo! for $50 billion dollars? Despite sounding like a number Dr Evil made up, it’s roughly the price tag Wall Street sources estimate for Yahoo!.

link (via mashable)

“New ‘bedouins’ transform a laptop, cell phone and coffeehouse into their office”

More and more of my friends and colleagues are gaining the luxury of working from anywhere they please. The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article that surveys the Bay Area’s bedouin landscape.

I’m not much of a fan of working in coffee houses. I had to hit mute between each time I spoke on a conference call I attempted in a cafe last month. Home office or couch would suit me just fine….

link (via computerworld’s response)

NY Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger isn’t sure. “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either,” he says. After declining profits and a $570 million loss at the Boston Globe, he is focusing on how to best transition from print to Internet.

Having a paper to feel in your fingers, visually reduce in size as you read each section and bring into the toilet is great, but the pain of delivery, cost, environmental impact and today’s 24 hour news sources should do it in fairly soon. I believe a full printed version will be around 10 more years, likely 20, but in the near future most physical ‘newspapers’ will be a thin flexible lcd screen.

link (via praized)

Today my eyes were opened, there are other dotcoms in Miami. Usually I’m working with our team in California or agencies in New York or Chicago, so little attention is paid to the scene down here. I’m hoping refreshmiami and Barcamp Miami are the tip of the iceberg, but my gut is telling me otherwise. Either way I will definitely be attending some of these conferences.

If you haven’t seen Who Killed the Electric Car?, add it to your netflix today. If you have, you’ll know all about this car’s predecessor, the EV-1. Apparently the Chevrolet Volt will be a little better, but you’d hope so since this one won’t be ready for at least 15 years after the EV-1 debuted (and was quickly and literally crushed).

“If you lived within 30 miles from work (60 miles round trip) and charged your vehicle every night when you came home or during the day at work, you would get 150 miles per gallon,” Lutz said. “More than half of all Americans live within 20 miles of where they work (40 miles round trip). In that case, you might never burn a drop of gas during the life of the car.”

Here’s hoping this comes out very soon and no assholes kill it.

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“Currently under construction in Dubai, Hydropolis is the world’s first luxury underwater hotel. It will include three elements: the land station, where guests will be welcomed, the connecting tunnel, which will transport people by train to the main area of the hotel, and the 220 suites within the submarine leisure complex. It is one of the largest contemporary construction projects in the world, covering an area of 260 hectares, about the size of London’s Hyde Park.”

But will they have a talking dolphin?

link (via geekblue)

Any excuse to show that stache….

“Hall of Fame pitcher Rollie Fingers owes Wisconsin more than $1.4 million in income taxes and is the seventh biggest tax delinquent in the state.”

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After Nick Saban’s press conference announcing his departure to Alabama, Dan Le Batard went on the attack blasting Saban’s decision to run to the money:

“You know what he was as Dolphins coach? A failure. A loser. A gasbag. And one of the worst investments Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga has ever made. He was less of a success than Dave Wannstedt and more of a traitor than Ricky Williams. There has been very little in franchise history that came with more expectations and fewer results than this hypocrite who at the end avoided the hard questions one last time.

Talk like a warrior. Behave like a weasel.”

I mostly agree with Le Batard. The Dolphins gave him time and this was their reward. I expected him to stick around at least another year to see if he could salvage his NFL reputation. Saban may bring about his own punishment though, he’ll be living in Alabama the next 10 years!

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